Sun beats the drums of war

Thanks to The Sun I now know what it may have been to read the paper in 1898 prior to the Spanish American War ("Punishing Syria," Aug. 27). Your editorial was all that yellow journalism could be, waving the bloody flag, citing massacres that no one could actually attribute to any one side with assurance. We have a president who states that crossing a red line will have serious consequences and then retreats like Hamlet to think on those consequences and issue more rhetoric.

Secretary of State John Kerry comes forth twice to cite an unspecified intelligence report that is certain proof of the guilt of the Syrian regime and that we will form a coalition to deliver consequences to the guilty, even though we really don't know who they are. And the supposed members of the coalition have one by one opted out, so we are left with a coalition of one. And we are told by our media, fully subservient to our would-be Caesar, that we must teach them a lesson, we must throw some bombs or missiles at the Syrian regime as punishment for their terrible crimes against their own people. Never mind that there is no such thing as a surgical strike and that a tomahawk missile is an expensive bomb to throw into a population center, both in results and basic cost. So what will be done? Bomb a pill factory as Bill Clinton did and declare victory? Send in troops with no back-up to be slaughtered on the ground as in "Blackhawk Down?"

And where are the anti-war Code Pink members, the myriad of demonstrators calling for impeachment of the president? What about the very words of the Senator Barack Obama, and Senator Joe Biden, that for a president to attack a country that has not attacked us is an impeachable offense? Why doesn't the media repeat their own words over and over?

Why is it that our would-be Caesar gets into battles with the pirates of Tripoli and ends up with our own people killed and wounded in Benghazi for no gain and for no apparent reason, and then shirks the responsibility for it? And as the coalition of countries has dried up, the support in Congress has as well, in both the Republican and Democratic party members. But our yellow press is out there blaming "hawkish Republicans" for calls to war. There was only one, Sen. John McCain, and that opportunity is over. Any attack by us right now will be seen as pure aggression. Any response by bombing will be ineffective at best, killing more civilians at worst. Weapons of mass destruction, we don't know where they are or who has them. For all we know, the Syrians may have used them or the Hezbollah or the Iranians.

This is a good time for President Obama to go back to Martha's Vineyard and play some more golf until his term ends.

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